Barbary Pirates in 20th Century

Is there any feasible way to have a Barbary Pirates-esque scenario in the 20th century, with stretches of the Mediterranean near North Africa off-limits due to piracy?

How would something like this come about? What would its effects be, and how long would the major powers tolerate it?
 

ninebucks

Banned
I don't think so. The Mediterranean is the mare nostrum, there's always been the idea that it belongs to Europe / Western civilisation / Christendom / the Heirs of Rome (take your pick), and as soon as Western Europe achieves naval dominance and the ability to project their navies globally (which would be very difficult to butterfly away), they're going to make it their priority to placate the Med.
 
There are actually two simple ways that this scenario can happen with a minimal amount of changes to the ATL:

* Starting in 1941, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) recognizes several criminal organizations in North Africa in an effort to battle the Nazis. This could include Corsican crime boss Paul Carbone, who trafficked in heroin starting in 1937. In fact the OSS and CIA conducted business with Unione Corse until roughly 1972.

* Another idea would be to have the Rudaj(Albania), Arifs (Tur.), Kilic (Tur.), and Tamurats (Tur.) criminal organizations suddenly act as either vigilante societies or informal militias in c.1946-1948. In this context, they could certainly be backed by the CIA, in an effort to conduct guerilla operations against the Warsaw Pact.
 
You'd basically need a long and corrosive war. It's not so much that the Med is thought of as belonging to Europe as that no state with a strong government will permit that kind of thing on its doorstep. It's why the (northern) Caribbean ran out of pirates, too. So to get there, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Portugal, Egypt and Greece need to be destroyed as functioning states (North Africa itself is less of a problem - I suspect that most of it is destined for anarchy once the colonising powers are thus gone).

I like the idea of US-backed crime organisations to fight the Communists, but I think you still need a big POD to make it go to that extent. Maybe if the Soviets get control of Germany, France, Italy and Greece and the USA prevails on Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Spain and Portugal to tolerate piracy, drug-running and coastal raiding to the point that by the 1960s, organised crime pervades their governments?
 
I like the idea of US-backed crime organisations to fight the Communists, but I think you still need a big POD to make it go to that extent. Maybe if the Soviets get control of Germany, France, Italy and Greece and the USA prevails on Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Spain and Portugal to tolerate piracy, drug-running and coastal raiding to the point that by the 1960s, organised crime pervades their governments?

*Also consider that starting in 1942, the United States began working with the Mafia in an effort to organize resistance to Mussolini and Hitler. Giuseppe "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, "Lucky" Luciano, and Meyer Lansky worked with OSS and MI-6 in an effort to organize the resistance. This was especially important in 1943, when the Allies seized Sicily during Operation HUSKY. Sicily would certainly create a perfect haven for the pirates.

* As for the issue of how to collapse of Western Europe, consider the German biological weapons program at Posen in 1943. Developed and institutionalized too late in OTL, when Soviet forces moved toward the Posen facility in March 1945, work at the station ended "without having accomplished anything very startling." In OTL, the Posen facility was working on weaponized versions of anthrax, yellow fever, and bubonic plague. Fortunately, Hitler was afraid in OTL, of possible retaliation by the Allies. What if Hitler had begun the biological weapons program in 1940?
 
It could rise if they only attacked other illegal ships, smugglers, an thus stayed under the radar.
 
It could rise if they only attacked other illegal ships, smugglers, an thus stayed under the radar.
Or the legal and political infrastructure to patrol the region has to collapse. Just consider the chaos that was the former Yugoslavia from 1991 until 1996. Another good example would be the warlords of Somalia, c.1994. Also considering adding these criminal organizations:

* Zemun Clan (Yugo/Macedonia)
* Nasa Stvar (Yugo/ Serbia)
* Internal-Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Macedonia for the Macedonians (VMRO-MNM) (Yugo/Macedonia)
* Banda della Magliana (Italy) -based in Rome
* Sacra Corona Unita (SCU) (Italy)- based in Apulia
* 'Ndrangheta (Italy)- based in Calabria
* Camorra (Italy) - based in the Campania region, (esp. Naples)
* Mala del Brenta (Italy)- based in Veneto, Italy

The situation in Somalia and Afghanistan both show how the political will to crackdown on the criminal organizations can lead to the rise of "warlordism"....
 
And Algeria collapsing at the same time... And some neo nazi/xenophobe naval militia trying to stop illegal emigration over the Med. Argh, the coolness...
 
*Also consider that starting in 1942, the United States began working with the Mafia in an effort to organize resistance to Mussolini and Hitler. Giuseppe "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, "Lucky" Luciano, and Meyer Lansky worked with OSS and MI-6 in an effort to organize the resistance. This was especially important in 1943, when the Allies seized Sicily during Operation HUSKY. Sicily would certainly create a perfect haven for the pirates.

Considering Meyer Lansky was a Jew born in Poland, I find it difficult to imagine he would have any role in a resistance against Hitler or Mussolini. With Lucky Luciano, he would have a difficult time with the mafiosos of Italy at this time (see Cesare Mori's and Mussolini's actions against the Mafia), not to mention his connections are old due to being in America (and in jail). Also, Luciano was less "old school" than the mafiosos of Sicily at the time. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that Bonanno didn't have enough rep by 1942, considering he left Sicily in the early 1920s and was more involved in the Mafia in America. The main job the Mafia had in WWII was protecting the major dockyards in America, not organizing some resistance.
 
Considering Meyer Lansky was a Jew born in Poland, I find it difficult to imagine he would have any role in a resistance against Hitler or Mussolini. With Lucky Luciano, he would have a difficult time with the mafiosos of Italy at this time (see Cesare Mori's and Mussolini's actions against the Mafia), not to mention his connections are old due to being in America (and in jail). Also, Luciano was less "old school" than the mafiosos of Sicily at the time. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that Bonanno didn't have enough rep by 1942, considering he left Sicily in the early 1920s and was more involved in the Mafia in America. The main job the Mafia had in WWII was protecting the major dockyards in America, not organizing some resistance.


Actually, the trick with Meyer Lansky was that he managed the considerable financial resources of the Mafia. If anything, while the control of the dockyards was the initial gain of the Mafia, consider that the Mafia made major gains when assisting the ONI, OSS and MI-6. For more information, please check out:

http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/book/08.htm

http://www.rense.com/general6/maf.htm
 
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